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Dessert

Potato Paste

A rolled pudding made from boiled potatoes, flour, salt, and jam, boiled in a buttered cloth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Potato Paste

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Mash the boiled potatoes while they are warm.

  2. Rub the potatoes with the flour until well mixed and resembling flour.

  3. Add the salt and a little cold water to form a stiff paste.

  4. Beat and roll out the paste three or four times, making it very thin the last time.

Roll and boil

  1. Spread the jam over the paste, rub the edges with water, and roll it up like a bolster pudding.

  2. Boil the rolled pudding in a buttered and floured cloth for three to four hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with a sweet sauce.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + black curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together51 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Black currant + buttertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Boiled potatoes
Provide moisture and a tender, starchy body to the paste.
Flour
Gives the paste structure so it can be rolled thin and hold its shape.
Black currant jam
Adds sweetness and fruity flavour inside the rolled pudding.

The step that matters

Rolling the paste very thin. Thin layers cook through evenly during the long boil and keep the pudding light rather than dense and gummy. Rubbing the edges with water helps the roll seal so the jam does not leak into the cloth.

Swap the black currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, flour, butter):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Black currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, flour, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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